 Wel, gafodd nhw'n prynhawn da croeso mawr i chi gyd i'n waith eto. Welcom to you all, once again, to this Facebook Live session. Looking forward to trying to answer as many questions as I can in the next 40 minutes or so. Thank you very much indeed to all those who've sent in questions already. There are several hundred already with us and I know that people will be joining and asking questions throughout the session. I'll try to go back and forth between the ones we've seen already and the ones just coming in. I'll start with a question that Dan has asked on Twitter, asking whether lockdown can be eased by areas of Wales rather than by a national approach. The answer to that question, Dan, is yes. Our rules allow for regional approaches where parts of Wales clearly demonstrate that they are in a different position to the rest of Wales. And not just for a few days but on a path that you know is going to be reliable for the future. Up until now we've had an all Wales approach and I think it has worked remarkably well. I'm incredibly grateful to all those people who've stuck with the very difficult rules we have to live with since Christmas. If a part of Wales clearly showed that it was in a different position to everywhere else, then our rules do indeed allow lockdown to be eased by area instead of nationally. We'll go to a question from Adam asking, when it is time for businesses to open, will we give people notice of that and will that be three weeks notice? Well, we will definitely give as much notice as we can. Some of you will have seen that we've announced today that the foundation phase children will go back to school straight after half term on the 22nd of February and that was giving people two weeks notice because we know that schools have to prepare to have children back there again just as we know that businesses need notice to be able to reopen in an orderly and effective way. Whether three weeks notice is possible will just depend on the state of the virus at the time and as many of you will know, this is a virus which can change very quickly, change the context very quickly, we'll give as much notice as we can. Can't promise it'll be as much as three weeks because that will just depend on how things are at the time. A question about whether we will give parents of other school years two weeks notice. And yes, that will be our aim because everybody has to prepare. Schools will certainly have to prepare to make sure the children can return safely. Parents need notice to make arrangements as well. Two weeks is what schools themselves told us they needed. That's why we've given that amount of notice this time and we will definitely try to do that again in future. A couple of questions, quite a lot of questions coming I can see about vaccination. So a question about why children who are on the shielding list aren't being offered vaccination and the answer to that is because no children are being offered the vaccine. You'll know just how rapidly this vaccine has been developed. What an amazing job scientists have done to get a vaccine through all the processes so that it is safe to use. But the trials were all carried out with adults. There's no evidence yet about using the vaccine with children and so you've got to be 16 or over to be able to get either of the vaccines that are currently available and that's why children on the shielding list aren't being offered it because no children are yet being offered vaccine here in Wales. A question that asks whether vaccine capacity will double when the second dose window starts. Look that's a very good question. We are very confident now that we will complete the vaccination offering to everybody on the top four priority groups by the middle of this month. That's what we said we would do in the beginning and the speed at which vaccine is being rolled out across Wales gives us real confidence we'll get there. 32,000 people vaccinated yesterday. The largest number in any one day. Over half a million people vaccinated in Wales already. And yesterday Wales was fourth in the world for the speed at which vaccine is being delivered. But from the 22nd of February we will be offering second doses of the vaccine to people who've had one dose already plus offering the first dose to the people who are on the next five priority groups. And that will be a challenge. That will be a challenge for our NHS. It will be a challenge for those people who have to plan how to get the vaccine out to people but provided the supply of vaccine keeps coming to us we're confident that we can do it. But offering second doses at the same time as first doses you can imagine the challenge it is when we are trying to do thousands and thousands of these vaccines every day and in every part of Wales. A question about the border that's been in the news a lot hasn't it this week? Whether we share the concerns that Scotland has expressed at the way that the UK government is going about preventing infection being brought in to the UK. And the answer to that is yes we do. Tootfully my experience of dealing with the UK government in the whole of the last 12 months has been that there are people in the UK government who always wanted to do the least that they can get away with. And the current plan to have 33 countries on a red list as it's called where if you come in from one of those countries you've got a quarantine in a hotel is I think the bare minimum that we need to do. The risk is that a new variant will crop up in one of the countries that isn't on the list. By the time we've realised that and there are people already in this country from those other parts of the world that new variant will be amongst us already so I wish the UK government would go further. Myself instead of having say everybody can come in apart from the 33 countries where they can't I'd rather have a system in which we said nobody can come in but here's a small list of countries which are an exception because we're sure that things there are safe. I think that would be a more effective defence against all the efforts we have made over recent weeks to get on top of the virus that we don't have that undermined by people coming in from parts of the world where the virus may still be growing and where there may be new variations of it still happening. People being lots of questions from people understandably about how we will ease our way out of lockdown. Well as you know the current level four restrictions have to continue until the 18th of February so in two weeks time we will be seeing whether we can ease things at all in the three weeks that follow. Our top priority as a Welsh government is to get our children and young people back into school. And you may say well why have we chosen that instead of businesses for example or allowing people to go out and exercise more or families to meet more. Well we've chosen to make our children and young people a priority because they have had such a difficult time in the last 12 months. They've lost huge amounts of schooling and not only have they missed out on education but they've missed out on growing up with other children in the way that most of us I guess on this call would have experienced and simply taken for granted. So headroom that we have will go to them first. If there is more then we will do more and we will set out that plan in two weeks time. You'll have seen we've already published our plan from moving from one level to another. We're at level four at the moment. We hope that if things continue to improve as they are we'll get closer to being at level three restrictions sometime into March. And of course we will explain how we're able to do that, why we're making the choices we are making absolutely aware of the need to get businesses back trading again, absolutely aware of the strain that families feel when they can't see one another but also having to be aware all the time that we've got to do this in a way that is safe for everybody and doesn't just lead to the vaccine and to the virus spreading again and knocking us all back, taking away all the ground we've gained together. A question about where are unpaid carers on the list for vaccination? Well a lot of unpaid carers will already have been vaccinated because they're already in the top four priority groups. We know that in Wales the bulk of unpaid carers are people who are themselves aged over 70 and they will be captured by those first priority groups and that's very good news indeed. The rest of unpaid carers will be captured in the next tranche so they're in priority group six so when we get past the first four groups and we get on to the next five they will be captured by that. We've started to provide information for unpaid carers to let them know how they will be vaccinated. We'll have to have a system in which people can show that they are an unpaid carer otherwise anybody could turn up and jump the queue by just claiming that they were and that wouldn't be fair at all but we are very keen because of the wonderful work that they do that we get those unpaid carers vaccinated as fast as we were able as we're able and they will be in the block of people that we will be focusing on once we get past the middle of this month. Some people are noticing that the clock behind me is an hour ahead. That's not to try and persuade people that we are recording this and putting it out later whereas live as we can be. I only ever come in this room these days to do these sessions and the person who comes and puts the clock right is probably self isolating somewhere at the moment but well done to all of those who managed to spot that and thank you for contacting us about it of course. Some questions about help for businesses. How much help there is? What more help we can offer? We do have the most generous system of business support anywhere in the United Kingdom. Once we knew that we were going to have to continue with level four restrictions beyond January we announced another £200 million worth of help for businesses. All the details are on the Business Wales website. I could go through it for you but it's quite complicated and it's probably better for people to look at the detail on the website itself but we have already sent more than £1.7 billion from the Welsh Government's budget out into the hands of businesses here in Wales to help them through this really tough time and there's more to come so please if you are one of those businesses and you're needing that help go and look the Business Wales website is the best place to get you the information that you need. Some a question from Harry and Harry thank you very much. Harry says hello my name is Harry and I'm 14 years old. What do you think the future of Wales is going to be due to the corona virus? Well look I said earlier that people like Harry are our top priority because of everything they have gone through but compared to some other times when I've come to do these sessions I think we have more grounds to be optimistic for the future than we have in recent months. Numbers of people suffering from corona virus in Wales are going down every day. The number of people in hospital because of corona virus is going down as well. 20% fewer people in a hospital bed with confirmed corona virus yesterday than Thursday of the week before and 20% fewer in our critical care beds as well. That combined with vaccination and the fact that we have new tests that we can use which will give people the results quicker and help them to make different decisions I think means that at the moment we can look ahead with a bit of optimism and the world that I want to create for people like Harry after corona virus is over is a world in which we can recover from this experience together put our NHS back on its feet get our businesses working again but a world that is fairer as well you'll hear a lot of people saying we need to build back better well I often say that we need to build back fairer because if it isn't fairer it won't be better. I don't want us just to go back to the way things were before corona virus because for lots of people the way things were weren't good enough and I want a future for Harry in which we can all work to make a more equal Wales a fairer Wales and a Wales where we focus on that other crisis that global crisis of climate change that will have a real impact on the life of 14 year old today into the future so that's the sort of world that I hope we will be able to help Harry and people like him to look forward to in Wales in the future a question about whether we will be able to be a bit more definite about the timescales against which we will vaccinate the next five priority groups so far we have said we hope to complete that in the spring and I do hope that we will now be able to be a bit more definite about all of that I want to get the first four groups done I want those thousands of people who are out there delivering vaccination to concentrate on completing that first milestone then we will say something more specific that everybody will be able to see as to when the next five groups will be completed remembering as I said earlier that at the same time as giving them a first dose we're going to have to be giving a second dose to those people who've been vaccinated already already too at the moment we're still saying it'll be done by the spring but keen to be able to give more definite ideas of when we hope that will be completed once we've got the first four groups done Luke asks if you don't live within walking distance of family or friends can you drive to go out for a walk with them and the answer to that look at the moment is no at the moment the rules in Wales are that you must stay at home and that your exercise must start and finish at your own front door we make exceptions for people who have got disabilities for example who have to be able to drive to a park for example to take exercise but for everybody else at the moment exercise begins and ends at home people should walk as much as possible cycle if they need to and getting in your car to drive to take exercise is not a reasonable excuse for leaving home if things continue to improve if we have a bit more headroom then finding ways in which family and friends can meet together more than they can at the moment of course is something we will definitely be trying to work on together another question about the new variant of the virus will the new variant the question asks make a difference to how we will move out of alert level four and the thresholds that we have published so far well the the levels and the thresholds were set before we knew anything about any new variant when we didn't even know about the kent variant that is now the dominant variant here in Wales and we will have to take that into account as we move out of level four because what we know about the kent variant is is that it infects a lot more people a lot more quickly than the original form of coronavirus so we don't want to see a future in which we lift the restrictions too quickly an awful lot of people get ill again and despite vaccination we find our health service back in the position it was just before christmas so it will make a difference we will have to take it into account and there may be other new variants as you will have heard from South Africa and Brazil that we will know more about in the future and we'll have to think about that uh as well people are asking me if i had a haircut during lockdown if i did it myself or if a family member is to blame uh well um i have had my haircut during lockdown because i got to the point where i simply couldn't see in front of me without it uh my daughter has done it for me uh nervously because she was afraid of making a mess uh of it and she'd never cut anybody's hair uh before and i don't think she's done too bad a job uh considering uh all of that and i'm very grateful to her and i'm sure loads of you uh are having to rely on family members to help you out as well um some questions about uh parents who are separated and who have children where they have what's called shared care uh can they still cooperate together to look after those children richard asked whether parents from separate households can meet outdoors with their respective children can they meet in a playground or and go for a walk together and the answer to that is is that richard provided the children are under the age of 11 you can now do that so we changed those rules last friday just one of the very small first steps we were able to take people from two different households can now go for a walk together provided they are both leaving their own front doors and returning to their own front doors and if there are children under the age of 11 then they can go together and you can meet in the way uh richard uh that you were uh asking mandi uh asking whether we're on track with a with a covid jam uh she's uh living in north wales she's a type one diabetic she's 57 uh years old uh so mandi the answer is yes uh you will be covered in the next set of priority groups and living in north wales you're living in a part of wales where more people have been vaccinated than anywhere else in wales every single gp practice in north wales has agreed to be part of the vaccination effort i think i think that's just brilliant isn't it uh that all of those practices who've been so busy already doing so much to help they're all of them vaccinating as well and you're in a part of wales where a lot of people have already got the vaccine and you will be there on that list as soon as the first groups are done oh a lot of questions about concerts will concerts go ahead this year uh well i certainly don't rule out the possibility the concerts will be able to resume uh well learning a lot as ever you know we we know that singing still is uh not a good thing to do because people project their voice when they're singing the virus travels further more people get infected and the new variant makes that more difficult still but later this year uh if things continue to go well i hope we will reach a point where and the carefully controlled conditions where social distancing will be part of what we do when we think carefully about the sort of concerts that can be mounted i'm absolutely looking forward myself uh to be back in st david's hall here in cardiff i haven't been to a live concert like everywhere else everyone else here for more than 12 months and now when you really do miss it and i'm hoping we'll be able to get back and do that before uh during this calendar year uh a question about how wales scotland northern island england are working together and pleased to say here that things have definitely improved since christmas i've answered questions here before when i've had to explain that i've been frustrated at the fact that we didn't have a regular reliable rhythm of engagement between the four nations that it it started and it stopped and it happened sometimes it didn't happen others every week since christmas the first ministers of scotland northern island and myself have met with a minister in the uk government called michael gove uh he runs the cabinet office he's a senior member of the uk government and we've been meeting every wednesday evening to make sure that we are planning together sharing together and doing as much as we can to move together when that is the right thing uh to do uh so that's a bit of good news that i think things have definitely been better since christmas and i'm very glad that we've got that regular pattern of contact because i think it means we all can make better decisions together um a question which is asking about whether it is right to use the headroom we've got uh to relax the lockdown and to allow schools to reopen wouldn't it be better the question asked to go on driving down cases uh for longer uh well this is one of those really difficult balancing acts there are lots of questions today i know that would like us to go further and faster why can't we play golf why can't we play tennis when will other thoughts of activities be able to resume but there is an argument and it's the one the questioner is putting to me to say shouldn't we uh go more slowly shouldn't we stick with a lockdown for longer in the end it's a matter of judgment and in the end that judgment lands on my desk at the moment my conclusion is that things are getting better fast enough that we can afford to begin the business of lifting the lockdown starting with schools first thinking about businesses and families uh and that you know coronavirus is sufficiently under control to allow that to happen if the position changes then of course we would have to go more slowly but you know it's very good to hear see all the questions very good to see all the arguments and thank you very much for making these points because it helps in making the judgments that have to be made a lot of people asking about when driving lessons and driving tests can continue and again it's one of those things that we will definitely be thinking about when you're doing driving lessons or driving tests you are in a confined space with somebody else and I know that you know big efforts were made to put precautions in place to protect driving instructors and people learning to drive but there is a risk involved when you're that close to one another even with precautions and I think we will have to see the virus down further it's at 125 per 100,000 the population today I think our alert level say it needs to be down closer to 50 before it will be safe for that to happen but it was over 200 this time last week so you know things can change fast and driving lessons and getting them to happen again it certainly hasn't been forgotten. Oh a question about mental health and I remember when I was sitting here last time there were lots of questions about the impact that coronavirus has had on people's sense of mental health and well-being it's the reason why we changed the rules last Friday to allow people to meet for exercise outdoors with one other household because we just recognised the toll that all this takes on people particularly people who are living alone or people who have particular health conditions so we've strengthened the mental health services in a number of different ways more services for young people partly in school partly online partly through services in the community we've invested more money in mental health services and we've recently announced some further investment. I think what I've learnt is that you've got to have a range of ways in which people can get the help they need because not everything suits everybody some people prefer to phone up and have a conversation on the phone and speak to a stranger some people want to meet somebody who they see week after week and build up a relationship and young people particularly are very good at using exercises and advice that they can get online we've strengthened all of them and we'll go on doing that because the mental health impact of coronavirus will be here even after the virus itself is in the rear view mirror a question about why are we starting with younger children first not older children well a couple of reasons really one is that younger children children under the age of seven really learning online and learning at home is hardest of all for them by the time you're in secondary school then you know you can be in charge of your learning yourself to a degree you can manage online lessons you can do some private study you can't do that if you're four or five years old that's why we need to get them back in the classroom first of all and the evidence is clear that you're much less likely to fall ill with coronavirus if you're a young child than if you're an adolescent and you're less likely to pass it on to somebody else as well so they're the safest group of people to start with and that's why we've chosen them in this way a question about whether teachers will be vaccinated well i'm sure the teachers will be vaccinated they're not in the top nine groups that the committee that we rely on the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation the most expert group we have in the whole of the united kingdom it provides advice to all four governments as to the order in which people should be invited for vaccination and the groups they've chosen are those people who are the most vulnerable to the worst impact of this very nasty disease we've got to get them done first then the jcvi will give us advice on other professional groups and it won't just be teachers will it it'll be retail workers who are face-to-face with the public every day bus drivers and train drivers who we know have had a bad time during coronavirus but people who come and pick up all rubbish every week and are out there face-to-face with the public as well there are lots of professional groups who have a case to make that they should be further up the queue for vaccination we rely on the advice of the jcvi so do scotland northern island and england that's one of the ways in which we are quite definitely doing things together and in the same way as soon as they tell us teachers should be vaccinated that is what we will do they're not in the top four groups or the top nine groups but very likely i think to be well they will be considered after that a question from lauren asking will we be back to normal next year well i think we're going to live with coronavirus all the way through this year a doctor said to me yesterday when i was in a meeting said coronavirus is going to have a long goodbye so even when we are saying goodbye to it because we've got vaccination and we've got other ways of dealing with it it's going to be with us through the whole of this calendar year and lots of the things we've learned to do the social distancing the hand washing the wearing of masks in crowded places i think we're going to be doing that through the whole of 2021 by the time we get a next year uh then let us hope indeed uh that we will be in a world where coronavirus uh is much more like something like the flu something which we may have to deal with every year but we managed to deal with it without it interfering with all the things that matter the most to us oh lots of people hoping to go on holiday wondering what that will be like this year when we'll caravan parks reopen should should i go abroad on holiday this year well my own advice to people on the second question is that i would think very carefully indeed about doing it uh i think this year uh is the year to take advantage of everything that wills has to offer uh i am absolutely hoping to be on holiday in pemberkshire uh this year again and uh i think that will be the safest way to go on holiday wills is a beautiful company but that's quite a big if isn't it you know if everything continues to go well lots of unexpected things have happened during coronavirus and they may happen to us yet during the next couple of months if they don't if our vaccination programme goes on if things continue to improve let's hope that by Easter there will be things that we'll be able to do of the sort that i know keeps lots of us uh going uh questions uh here uh about long COVID and the services that we have here in Wales uh Debbie Debbie Gibson uh says to me in england they've set up COVID hubs where we've whereas we've not done that here in Wales and why not and what have we done instead well the problem with a COVID hub approach i think is uh that it's inevitable that to use them lots of people have to travel long distances uh to get to them and in Wales as you know we've got large parts of Wales with a scattered population uh when traveling long distances would be inevitable and if you are suffering from long COVID uh then getting in your car or even being driven by somebody else to a hub far away i think will be pretty daunting uh what we've done here in Wales instead is first of all to focus on self-help because one of the most effective ways to get over long COVID is to do all the things you can do for yourself at home there's an app uh that we have developed you can go on to the NHS Wales website type in long COVID the app will come up it gives fantastically good advice lots of exercises lots of things you can do to help yourself after that we ask people to use their GP services that's the first port of call the health services that is closest to your own home and get advice from your GP and for some people there will be a need to get some more specialist hospital services but again our aim is to get those services in the hospital close enough to where you live and that's the approach we've had here in Wales going to look now to see if there are any final questions uh coming in yes a couple of questions three questions i can see which i'll try and deal with uh the first a nice question uh thank you to ever uh asked it it says how is the first minister doing uh what is what am i doing to take some time out well uh i'm fine and thank you very much for asking i've always thought i'm very lucky during the last 12 months i've not been uh ill myself uh this is a tough time for everybody and you know it's a tough time to be first minister as well i guess because there are some pretty uh tough decisions that come across the desk most days but life is tough for everybody and it's no tougher for me than it is for anyone of you uh and i try and get a bit of time to myself uh it doesn't happen much uh and if i get it then as some of you will know uh i try and get up to my allotment which is a five minute uh bike ride away from uh my house and to spend an hour outside in the open air away from the phone away from the computer just trying to get what being outside does for you you know just restores you a bit doesn't it and i know that many of you will be doing the same uh quite a lot of questions about children and sport and when we can get back to allowing children to do more outside and team games and just as children are our top priority for getting back into the classroom so children will be a priority for us as well in outdoor activities we know that being outdoors is safer than being indoors with coronavirus and we are thankfully just beginning to move into the better time of the year when it'll be more possible to be outside and offering children more opportunities to be outdoors uh to get together to train to play to take advantage of that that will definitely be part of our plan for beyond the current period and a final question what will happen at the next three week review of the regulations well as you know we review the regulations every three weeks we're a week into that three weeks now we've already had the first discussions inside the Welsh Government about what options there may be in three weeks time uh i will meet my cabinet colleagues will meet with our advisors at the start of next week we look at a long list of things that we might be able to do many of them will be the things that you've asked about this afternoon we look to see how safe it will be to begin to lift the lockdown in those ways by the beginning of the following week the third week we will have narrowed that list down we'll have focused on children in school and out of school as i've said and we will look to have seen whether there's anything else that we might be able to do and then by friday two weeks today i will do the usual press conference that i give and i'll be able to explain the changes that we are able to make for the following three weeks and hopefully the things that we will be thinking of for the three weeks beyond that as well to give people as much notice as possible but always to make the difficult decisions we have to make in a way that is designed to keep you your families communities and everyone in wales safe thank you very much indeed once again for everything that you are doing to be part of that huge national effort we are succeeding in wales and we're succeeding because of everything that you do thank you very much indeed for being with us this afternoon